


Not Unallied to Angels

by the_rck



Series: All the Faces We Were [2]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Ethical Dilemmas, Introspection, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 19:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Of course, Warren noticed.





	Not Unallied to Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet XLII in Sonnets from the Portuguese.
> 
> Thanks to Elizabeth Culmer for beta reading and suggestions.

Warren had spent nearly a year hoping he was wrong. He’d known that he wasn’t, but he really hadn’t wanted to face the consequences of being right. Even putting the possibility into words made it too real.

Will didn’t notice, of course. He needed the proverbial two by four. And, with his invulnerability, he was unlikely to notice even that unless he happened to see it coming. In this case, Layla had been a solid presence, someone trustworthy, farther back than Will could remember. He’d deny it up until he couldn’t any more.

Magenta might have noticed or might not have. Warren couldn’t discount the possibility that Layla already had an ally, and Magenta was pretty good at cracking computer systems. She also didn’t give away other people’s secrets, and she liked Layla.

They all liked Layla. Warren guessed that made it harder to see coming. His mother liked Layla, too, but she was still the first one to say it. “It’s not always greed or ambition that make a villain, Warren. Sometimes, it’s ideals, too-- Or even instead.” She didn’t say more. She didn’t have to. 

Warren’s father hadn’t been an idealist, but Warren understood what she meant. _Don’t make my mistake._

She just never told him which mistake. She regretted everything about Warren’s father-- except Warren. He’d always known that-- including both deciding not to stand with him at the end and not leaving him sooner. She’d admitted as much when Warren was old enough to start making choices about who he wanted to be. “I’d rather you stay away from the capes and costumes altogether than follow your father,” she’d told him, “but I’ll walk through Hell with you if that’s where you choose to go.”

Would Warren walk through Hell because Layla chose to go there? Possibly. Possibly not.

He almost persuaded himself that Layla’s integrity wouldn’t allow her to lie to all of them, that, if she went villain, she’d reveal it to them rather than risk betraying them. He knew, though, that there were things that outweighed her need to do what was right. She hadn’t hesitated to pretend a romance with Warren-- without asking him first-- when she was in danger of losing Will. That lie was smaller but really very much the same thing as this one.

Layla held onto her people. She’d never been alone, so leaving her friends, her family, was more than she could bear. He supposed, too, that her projects would become more difficult when she no longer had Will to carry her to wherever she needed to go.

Will actually thought she was doing environmental research for her dissertation. That some of the other students from the sidekick track were also doing dissertations probably provided some cover. A lot of them had gone on to higher degrees or simply to careers that weren’t all about always being less than everyone else.

Layla talked a lot about using her gifts to increase crop yields and prevent malnutrition or to make the Sahara bloom, but Warren had noticed a pattern to her excursions. He doubted that anyone who didn’t know the details of Layla’s travels would guess, but spores in circuit boards and lichens that ate plastic seemed too coincidental.

Everywhere Layla went for her research, construction projects, land clearing, oil prospecting, all of it failed in ways that made it too costly to continue immediately. Seeing how Layla’s powers could be used to do it was challenging, but if she was creative enough-- or maybe working with someone else who understood economics and machinery-- it was possible. Also, algae blooms in improbable places, kudzu becoming even more aggressive, new Arctic plants that absorbed meltwater _and_ ate metal… Improbable didn’t begin to cover it.

The whole point of having Will fly Layla to the Amazon or the Arctic or wherever was to keep anyone else from seeing the pattern. No paper trail. No permits or bribes or even questions. Just a pleasant day for Will and Layla in some bit of wilderness. If Will got distracted, saving people or stopping crime or something-- Well, he was Will. No matter where he went, he’d find something like that, and him being distracted simply gave Layla more room to do what she was going to do anyway.

She’d never suggested that Warren join them, not once, and Warren was pretty damned sure it wasn’t because she wanted to be alone with Will.

Which meant she was already betraying Will. There was no way she could pretend otherwise, and she had to know how hurt and angry Will would be when he found out. Warren hoped he could make peace when it happened. If he couldn’t, his life would be pretty unbearable.

Warren considered talking to Will’s mother. Josie had a stronger grasp on nuance than her husband did, and she'd changed Layla's diapers once upon a time. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with what had grown between Will and Warren and Layla, but she didn’t pretend that it hadn’t happened the way that her husband did. She even invited Warren’s mother to Thanksgiving every year now. 

Then Warren realized that Josie wouldn't agree with the plan he had started to form. It would mean no more dreams of grandchildren, no more family holidays. No more Stronghold Three. Not ever again.

There might still be children, but Layla would never risk letting anyone know they existed. Children were too damned easy to kidnap.

And that told Warren that he'd already decided. He wasn't committed to it, not immediately, not until he started liquidating his father's hidden assets and trying to decide how to spend the money. Not even then, really, because having the money and thinking about it were intention rather than action. As long as he didn’t meet any telepaths, no one else would know.

Though his mother probably guessed.

But Layla was going to need money once she couldn’t have Will provide transportation any more. Money for airfare and money for several sets of identification. Maybe money for some sort of private transportation. She was going to need people, too. She probably hadn’t thought about that, but she couldn’t possibly manage all of the things she seemed to want to without a technopath at the very least, and she probably really needed people with the sorts of skills Sky High didn’t teach-- industrial espionage, scientific and business networking, breaking and entering without leaving evidence. 

Even if Warren was right about Magenta, she couldn’t possibly know all of that.

Most of the teachers at Sky High liked to pretend that people without powers weren’t ever anything but bystanders to be protected or exploited. Most of the students accepted that idea, internalized it. Warren thought that Layla might not have realized that she had, but being second generation meant not ever really seeing ordinary people, meant separating yourself from them and hiding your true self at all costs. There was a reason Will’s only close friends had been Layla and Zach.

The Strongholds sold real estate. Layla’s mother wrote lifestyle columns for vegan magazines. His mother designed videogames. All things that gave them flexible schedules and a varying stream of income that could cover almost anything.

Layla wasn’t going to be able to maintain a civilian identity.

Warren realized, eventually, that all of his hesitation centered on Will. Will would survive losing Layla. He’d probably even survive losing Layla and Warren. It just might make Will into his father. Will had struggled hard to pull his expectations of himself away from being a copy of his father’s life, but going back to that, however soul-killing, would probably be easier than facing this loss. And the reasons for the loss.

Which led Warren back to the plan he wanted to avoid. He just didn’t see a way around it.

When Warren went to Layla, he’d have to bring Will with him. He’d have to kidnap Will. He just didn’t see how that could work until after they had a secret base and minions and… But kidnapping Will had to come first, before Will had a chance to figure anything out or jump to any conclusions. When Will made up his mind that something was right, he’d face any pain for it and only reconsider if forced. He had that much of his father in him.

Warren thought-- Warren hoped-- that Will would prefer some fiction of being a prisoner over fighting Warren and Layla, but the charade would have to be set up and maintained well enough to let him choose that. Or not. Warren couldn’t imagine either of them forcing Will to stay if he really wanted to leave. Will just had to have time to decide.

Warren just couldn’t believe that Will would give either of them up for anything as uncertain as right and wrong. Warren had to be right about that. He had to be because there was no way that Warren could choose between Layla’s death or imprisonment-- the thought of Layla in the same prison with Warren’s father was beyond horrifying; they’d keep her from any hint of power, probably even from sunlight-- and the destruction of Will’s soul.

Either way, part of Warren would break.

Warren wasn’t prone to praying, but he did then. “Both of them. Both of them safe. Both of them happy.” He’d do anything for that.


End file.
